


Paper Rose

by Randomcat1832



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, First Meetings, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Implied Anxiety, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Les Mis Big Bang: Quarantine Edition, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24030967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Randomcat1832/pseuds/Randomcat1832
Summary: My submission to the Les Mis Big Bang: Quarantine Edition.Éponine doesn't really know what to expect when her father sends her to collect money from their new neighbour, but it isn't the fumbling young man in fine clothes with the suitcase full of books. And she definitely isn't expecting to make a friend.
Relationships: Marius Pontmercy & Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Les Mis Big Bang: Quarantine Edition





	Paper Rose

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Les Mis Big Bang 2020: Quarantine Edition. Many thanks to my beta Pigeon, @radioactivepigeons on tumblr, for reading through this and for being very patient with my staggered bursts of writing and inability to adhere to deadlines.
> 
> Like all my Les Mis work, this is set in a vaguely musical-based universe that is probably more accurately a wild grab bag of novel verse, musical verse, and an array of my own ideas. I am a being of chaos and I play by my own rules. 
> 
> This story contains implied/referenced child abuse, and some brief instances of Thénardier acting like Thénardier, for lack of a better term, but all things considered it’s pretty well in the background.

**MAY 1829**

The new lodger arrived with no warning, in the middle of the afternoon. It was his footsteps that clued them in.

Her father lifted his head from where he’d been resting it on the table, suddenly an animal on alert. “Well, look at that, my dears. Seems like we’re gettin’ a new neighbour.”

It was hot for May, and Éponine was sitting on the floor underneath the opened window with Azelma, not really doing anything. There was nothing much to do these days. “How do you know?” she asked, tiredly. 

Her father tapped the end of his pipe against the table, then jabbed it toward the door and grinned a toothy grin. “Fresh set o’ footsteps out there. Ain’t much of a surprise, there’s empty rooms aplenty in this dump. No surprise there either, bitch who runs this place charges a fortune for the house she runs. Leechin’ off the poor man… ” He shook his head and began to refill his pipe. Éponine thought he might start to descend into his usual mutterings, but the sounds of a murdered conversation next door grabbed everyone’s attention. Two voices—the landlady’s was the loudest, and another, quieter voice, probably male.

“They’re moving into the apartment directly next door.” Azelma sounded miserable. “I _do_ like it when it’s quiet here.”

“Never mind that,” her mother spoke up from where she was perched on the edge of the bed, scraping patches of mould from a loaf of bread. “New neighbours mean trouble. Nosing about in our business, and—” she jerked her chin at her husband—“ _you_ can’t risk that. You’re bloody reckless enough as it is, joining in with that band of thugs.”

Éponine’s father ignored his wife, turning instead to his daughters. “One of you, go on and weed him out. Discover what sort o’ man he is and report back. Get him to give ya some coins if he’s got any—fat chance of that, mind, if he’s slumming it in a place like this. Prob’ly another drunk who’ll get carted out in a month when he can’t pay the rent.” 

“Should be Éponine who goes,” her mother spoke up. “She’s the clever one.”

Éponine glowered, chancing a glance at her sister. Azelma had shrunken into herself just slightly, shoulders hunched and knees tucked a little closer to her scrawny frame, but Azelma always made so little of herself that it wasn’t easy to tell when she’d been hurt.

But Éponine had learned a long time ago that there was no arguing with her father. You survived by doing what you were told, and kept yourself sane by slipping away when you could afford it. Besides, Azelma was such a meek little thing that she didn’t have a chance of getting information out of their new neighbour. Éponine gave her sister’s wrist a quick squeeze before picking herself up and smoothing out her skirts.

Without looking at her parents, Éponine marched to the door and waited until she heard the landlady leaving. Then she waited another minute before slipping outside and heading for the neighbouring apartment. The new lodger had left the door wide open, meaning that he was either an idiot or a drunk. Perhaps both.

Éponine wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting—an urchin who’d picked enough pockets to scrape together enough coin to land himself a bed for a week or two, a released convict. Or perhaps just a drunk, like her father said. What she had _not_ been expecting was a young man—more of a boy, really; he only looked to be a few years older than herself—dressed in fine clothes and sitting on the edge of the bed with a single valise in his lap and a dazed look on his face.

The boy didn’t seem to notice her standing in the doorway, and Éponine took the opportunity to watch him. He was handsome, she thought, in a slightly awkward, youthful sort of way. Pale, freckled skin and nut-brown hair that stuck up in a quiff. Long, gangly, limbs and a perfect slope of a nose. He was gripping the valise tightly in both hands, riding it up and down as he bounced one knee in a nervous rhythm. He was biting his lip, his brows drawn tightly together, as if he wasn’t entirely sure where he was or why or what he was doing there.

He looked entirely out of place in the one-room apartment. It was even smaller than her family’s own quarters. There was a bed shoved into one corner with an ugly brown coverlet on top of it, and a small writing-desk that seemed to double as a table, a half-used candle resting atop its ink-stained surface. Other than that, there was only a shrunken dresser and a rickety chair next to a small tin wash tub. The entire room smelled faintly of mildew, the kind that had worked its way into the bedclothes and the floorboards, the kind that couldn’t go away no matter how wide you cracked open the window. But it was a relief compared to the stench of alcohol and vomit that Éponine had grown accustomed to in her own apartment. 

Inexplicably, the boy still hadn’t noticed her. Éponine continued to wait in silence, her initial curiosity giving way to a mounting impatience. It took him another good minute to notice her hovering in the doorway, and he jumped visibly when he did.

“Oh,” he said, his brows pinching further together. He seemed to be struggling to think of something to say, then finally settled on, “Do you need--may I help you?”

Éponine shrugged, leaning against the doorframe, never taking her eyes off of him. “I’ve come by to see you. I live in the apartment next to yours.”

“Oh—how nice. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I haven’t brought a housewarming gift, I’m afraid,” she said. “It’s only me.”

The boy seemed to mull this over for a moment. “That’s alright. I wasn’t expect—that is. It’s fine.” He set the valise aside and stood up, very abruptly, then just as abruptly stuck out his hand for her to shake. “My name is Marius Pontmercy.” The words came out in a rush, tripping over each other in their scramble to get past his lips.

Éponine stared at the hand for a moment, then at the boy. Marius. He didn’t look pained, exactly, but he seemed intensely unsure of himself. Not that that was surprising. Éponine doubted that he’d ever spoken to a street rat before, rich gent that he was. And emphasis on the _was_ , too. Nobody with that kind of money would come to live in the Gorbeau tenement by choice.

Marius was too—polite, the old proper manners betraying him. He’d have to get rid of those or he’d be robbed within the week. But whatever his reasons for being here, and whatever his background, he seemed kind. Genuine. Éponine had gotten quite good at sizing people up over the years. She was good at spotting a lie, good at spotting people who were all manners on the outside but were rotten to the core, like a spoiled fruit whose rot had not yet worked its way up to its smooth skin.

But despite his rank, Marius was none of those things.

She took his hand. “Mine is Éponine. Éponine Thé—Jondrette,” she caught herself, wincing internally. Three years with this new name and she still hadn’t gotten used to it. She’d never had a reason to _introduce_ herself before.

Marius was moving to lift her hand up, and she realised he meant to kiss it. She dropped her hand and took a step back, and Marius scrambled to straighten himself and stuck his hands into his trouser pockets. He took a step back, too, and the backs of his knees collided with the bed, causing him to topple backwards onto it. He reddened and sat up, then seemed to decide he was best off staying where he was. He waved vaguely around the room. “Do you want to—chair,” he finished.

Éponine studied him a moment longer, then made to close the door. She needed to push hard on the wood for it to close all the way, and once the latch fell with a _thunk_ , she moved to sit on the chair.

There was a prolonged moment of silence. Marius grimaced, and Éponine made to fill it.

“So what brings you here, _m’sieur_? You’ll pardon my saying so, but you look rather out of place, in a place like this.”

She wondered if he had come from the Champs Elysees.

“I, um.” Marius cleared his throat. “Yes. I’ve recently, um, fallen out of money, so I’ve become rather—sorry, that must seem very insensitive of me, _you’re_ here, after all, and you—oh, good Lord, I _am_ sorry—”

“It’s—fine.” Éponine tugged at the fabric of her skirts and tucked one leg under her. She could never really get comfortable sitting in chairs the way everyone else did.

“This room is small,” Marius spoke up. “I paid rent in advance. I must admit, I was expecting something bigger.”

Éponine nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from barking out a loud _ha!_ Instead she leaned forward in the chair. It tottered dangerously at first, then settled back in place. “No, _m’sieur_ Pontmercy. Not around here.”

“Oh, just Marius, please. I don’t care for those kinds of formalities. Not because I’m—living in this place and cannot be bothered anymore,” he hastened to add. “Just because I have never been one to care much about that kind of thing.”

Éponine watched him closely; he was fidgeting, tapping the tips of his fingers against his thumb in a quick, frantic sort of rhythm, but with his hands shoved between his knees, like he was trying to hide it. Azelma sometimes pulled at her hair when she was tense or nervous or flustered, and Azelma was usually some combination of those things, but there was something oddly practised in Marius’s tapping. Éponine pretended not to notice.

“So.” Marius’s voice broke the silence. “What is it like here? I don’t at all know what to expect.”

“I noticed.” Marius winced in apology, but Éponine found herself grinning. “It’s all right. I’ve come to learn a thing or two in my time here. You’d be surprised.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “You must keep your door shut and locked at all times, when you’re in and when you’re out. And it would be wise to keep your finest things tucked in the corners, lest anyone sees into your room when you’re leaving—and they _will_ look, _m’sieur_. Hide your money, but not under the mattress, that’s the first place everyone checks. Count your coins, and don’t eat all your food at once when you come into a lot of it. You mustn’t interact much with the other tenants, and—” For just a moment, she hesitated—“mind my father. Him and his lot, really, but my father most of all.”

She waited for Marius to probe, to ask further questions— _why_ mind her father, and which one _was_ he, anyway? But whether he noticed the tightness to her voice, or whether he just didn’t think to ask for more information that he’d been offered, Marius stayed silent, staring at her expectantly. Éponine rounded things off with a shrug. “Anyway. There are worse places to be.”

Marius nodded once, offering her a quavering little smile. “Thank you, Éponine. I shall keep that in mind.”

She nodded back. An odd gesture of acknowledgement, one that would have been difficult to read on anyone but Marius, who, as it was quickly becoming clear, wore his armour with the chinks exposed, when he wore it at all. And he was the type to run into battle forgetting to don it altogether.

“I, um.” Marius reached for his suitcase. “I haven’t brought very much with me, so that’s good news, I imagine.” And chose that moment to pop the latches on his valise and open it up.

Éponine stood up and went to lean against the bedframe to see. About half the valise was filled with clothes—she could see clumsily folded white shirts and vests, and a collection of cravats stuffed into the sides. The other half contained books, and she wondered at the weight of the suitcase.

She raised her eyebrows at him and Marius gave a hesitant smile, pulling out one of the books before setting the valise beside him on the bed. “I need them for—well, I’m a student, you see. This is one of my law textbooks for university.”

Éponine bit her lip, reaching out toward it. “May I?” Marius nodded, passing the book over to her, and she weighed it in her hands. It was an enormous tome, and she gingerly cracked it open to a random page only to meet an offending wall of text in microscopic print. She stared at it for a moment before handing it back. “It seems like a lot to remember. Is it boring?”

Marius inclined his head to the side. “Bit.”

She wrinkled her nose in sympathy and leaned forward to inspect the other books in the valise, noting the well-worn volume near the top. “ _Gulliver’s Travels_ ,” she read aloud. “Oh, but that’s one of my favourites! Was, I should say.” Éponine caught the confusion that flashed across Marius’s face, and stuck out her chin. “I _can_ read, you know. Pretty well, too.”

“Really? Sorry, I—”

She lifted a shoulder. “Before we came to Paris, we lived in a village not so far from the city. But then my father… he had accumulated some debts, and we could no longer afford to run our inn. So we left.” It occurred to Éponine that her father would probably wring her neck for saying even that much. For sharing anything about before, about the Montfermeil days. He really might, too. But Éponine couldn’t bring herself to care. Her father wasn’t here right now, and there was a sort of thrill to be had in going against his will, and in sharing that rebellion with another.

“Anyway,” she cleared her throat. “That was just a little schoolroom, of course. I imagine you went to some posh boarding school for all of you well-to-do folks. They probably taught you to read in a dozen different languages there.”

“I did,” Marius admitted. He looked almost embarrassed. “I mean—I had a private tutor until I was ten, but then my grandfather sent me to a boarding school in the countryside. And we _were_ trained in a number of languages. Yes. Latin, English, German. You understand.” The beginnings of a laugh petered off into silence. He added, a little quieter, “I hated it there. There is not a place on earth that I’ve despised so thoroughly.”

Éponine almost made fun of him for that. A school where you were well clothed and generously fed, where you were guaranteed a warm bed every night, in a room that probably always had a fire crackling in the hearth, could not possibly be the most despicable place on earth. Then she pictured Marius, at a school far away surrounded by the sons of the wealthiest men in all of France. Meek and fumbling Marius scrambling to maintain his family’s good name among those throngs of boys, and she understood.

“Um.” Marius’s hands fluttered above _Gulliver’s Travels_ before he plucked it up out of his valise. He ran his thumb over the frayed and faded cover. “This was a favourite of mine, too. Though it sometimes frightened me quite a lot. It made for a good companion at school.”

She grinned. “Did you wish to sail away to faraway lands, too?”

“Oh, heavens, no. But—” Marius chewed at his lower lip—“it was nice to imagine it happening to other people.” He set the book down carefully on the bed beside him, as if not to disturb its contents.

“Hmm. I always imagined I’d become an explorer one day, and take no-one but ’Zelma and the cat.”

The seconds ticked by, not quite uncomfortably. Marius had stopped tapping. For a moment, Éponine let herself enjoy it. Marius’s room seemed a world away from the apartment on the other side of the wall. The apartment was never quiet, and it certainly wasn’t peaceful. Back in Montfermeil, Éponine used to slip out of the rowdy inn and lie down among the hay in the stables. They had had no horses of their own, but most of the travellers staying at the inn did, and it had been important to keep stables for that reason. The stables always reeked, but Éponine had relished in the peacefulness of it, where the only sounds were the soft chuffing of the horses.

It was like that now. Like she was floating. But then gravity took hold—there was a moment’s freefall, then the devastating crash.

“My father sent me, by the way. He wants me to ask you for money, if you have it. It’s why I’ve come.”

She cut herself off then, and looked him in the eye. It was a _There, I said it_ sort of moment. She was not ashamed to be begging; her father sent her and Azelma begging all the time, even if he couldn’t take the humiliation himself. But she’d never had to go begging to someone she’d begun to _like_. Now Marius would think she’d been after his money all this time, not his companionship.

She watched as Marius brought his brows together in a slight frown, then, to her surprise, shuffled on the bed to rummage in his trouser pocket. After a moment, he pulled out a small cloth satchel **,** tugged at the drawstring, and produced two coins, which he promptly held out to her. Fist closed.

Éponine held out her hand, a little uncertain. He dropped the coins onto her outstretched palm, and she looked down.

Her heart stopped.

Two single Franc coins were sitting there. Shiny ones, recently minted.

She wasn’t sure how long she stared at them, but finally she managed to tear her eyes away, and all but gawked at him in disbelief.

Maybe he was stupid, or maybe he was so desperate for a friend in this lonely new life of his that he simply didn’t care. Maybe this was the part where he’d want a favour in return. Most men would ask, about now. She had a hard time believing he could afford to be generous—he must have _some_ sense of how little he had—but then, people could be surprising. He was already surprising her.

“ _M’sieur_ ,” she heard herself saying. “Oh, no, I couldn’t _possibly_ —” 

“No, please.” Marius jerked to his feet. His hands waved about at his sides for a moment before he plunged them safely into his pockets. “I don’t mind. That is—I’d like for you to have it.”

“Yes, but this much—” Éponine faltered, but hunger gave way to humility. Then reason kicked in. “My father will be suspicious if he sees this much,” she said. “And trust me, _m’sieur_ , before you learn it for yourself, you do not want a man like my father to have any reason to be suspicious of you. He’ll sweep you clean, take everything you have, and slit your throat if you get in the way. Haven’t you anything smaller?”

Marius blanched at this line, and his eyes bugged out slightly, but he recovered surprisingly well. “Um—I should.” He took out a couple of fifteen- _sous_ pieces from the satchel, and handed them to her. She made to return his two Francs , but he stayed her hand. “Wait. Just—” He plucked one coin out of her hands and closed her fingers around the one that remained. “Keep that one for yourself. A secret, if you will.”

It felt like charity, and she could see the pity in his eyes for what it was. She hadn’t noticed that before. But you had to have a certain amount of privilege to be proud enough to refuse charity. One Franc could go a long way. She could buy something for herself and Azelma, buy something for her brother, if she ever found him. Éponine nodded once, dropping the Franc into her pocket and jingled the thirty _sous_ in her hand. “I had better go.”

He stepped forward, and held the door open for her. Still a gentleman. “Of course. I had best unpack my things. Um. Carefully. Like you advised.”

“Yes. See you about, then, _m’sieur_ Marius.”

“Truly, there’s no—”

“Well, perhaps I like calling you _m’sieur_.” She had meant it teasingly, but as she said the words she realised that she actually did. She liked the way it tasted on her tongue, a gentle murmur of a word, like a summer breeze rustling lace curtains. Lips lightly pursed to form the _m_ , then a soft hiss of an _s_ followed by a soft release of air.

Marius scratched the back of his head and let out a small laugh. “All right, then.”

“You may call me ‘Ponine, if you like.”

“’Ponine. That’s lovely. Very well. I shall.”

“It’s what my sister calls me.” Éponine ran her thumb up and down the rough wood of the doorframe, then dropped her hand suddenly, feeling the sting of a splinter. “Nobody else, really.” She tilted her head and flashed him a little grin. “It shall be nice, don’t you think? Having a friend around here. We shall have to look out for each other, _m’sieur_.”

“I—” Marius stared at her for a moment, almost in shock, and for a split second she worried she’d overstepped and offended him. Then a huge grin split across his face, and he released a short, breathy laugh. “I—yes. Yes, that would be... Yes. I should like that very much. A friend.”

“All right, then, _m’sieur_ Marius. See you about.” Éponine tipped an imaginary hat at him, then swung round the corner and out the door. Even as she returned to her family’s quarters, her heart felt a hundred pounds lighter.


End file.
